UN says Saudi attack on Yemeni school bus ‘tragic, unjustifiable’

Press TV – The UN has said that there is no justification for Saudi Arabia’s latest massacre in Yemen which claimed the lives of scores of civilians, mostly of whom were children.

“What we are seeing today are the victims of the airstrike. The terrible human cost of the airstrike and of the war. The entire world condemns this,” said UN humanitarian coordinator in Yemen Lise Grande on Tuesday during a trip to the war-torn country.

On Thursday, dozens of civilians have lost their lives and dozens more sustained injuries as Saudi warplanes targeted a bus carrying children in Yemen’s northwestern province of Sa’ada.

Grande added that the UN Secretary General of has called for an “immediate transparent, comprehensive, independent investigation,” into the deadly attack on civilians.

Meanwhile, UNICEF’s resident representative in Yemen, Meritxell Relano, has called for an end to Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen and continued massacring of children.

“In the recent attack in Sa’ada, I have visited at least 13 children that have injuries and I hope that they are good to go very soon and back to play, and play football, and back to their normal lives because this has been a very shocking attacks, terrifying, which will leave them not only physical injuries but also psychological injuries,” Relano added.

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has announced 40 children were among 51 civilians recently killed during a Saudi airstrike on the school bus in northwestern Yemen.

The children were returning from a trip organized by a religious seminary when the bus came under attack. Images later circulated online, showing pieces of a US-made bomb on the scene

The United Nations Security Council has called for a “credible and transparent” investigation into the airstrike.

Thousands of mourners attended a funeral procession for many of the dead children in Sa’ada’s provincial capital of the same name on Monday, venting their anger against Riyadh and Washington.

The Saudi-led coalition however described the attack as “legitimate,” with coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki even claiming that the strikes “conformed to international and humanitarian laws.”

Some 15,000 Yemenis have been killed and thousands more injured since the onset of the Saudi-led aggression on Yemen in March 2015.

The United Nations says a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.

A high-ranking UN aid official has warned against the “catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there is a growing risk of famine and cholera there.

“The conflict has escalated since November, driving an estimated 100,000 people from their homes,” John Ging, UN director of aid operations, told the UN Security Council on February 27.